Is There Room for Royalties in W3C Recommendations?
By Thor Olavsrud July 16, 2002 The World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Patent Policy Working Group may return to the breach yet again this week in an attempt to create some sort of exception that will allow the standards body to include patented technologies, for which patent-holders could charge royalties, in some specifications. The working group may vote as early as this week to push ahead with a draft proposal. The working group first entertained a proposal that would have allowed the standards body to support reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) licensing for some specifications in August, 2001, unleashing a firestorm of controversy. Opponents of the proposal rigorously objected, saying the W3C should only support royalty-free (RF) specifications. The working group backed off from its RAND efforts in February, electing to focus its efforts on RF specifications and shunt the RAND question to the backburner. But while Danny Weitzner, chair of the W3C’s Patent Policy Working Group,
